I am a CPA in Texas with an MBA from the University of Chicago. I have seen a lot and made many mistakes. Hopefully by now I will have learned something from them. Just as importantly, you may learn something from my mistakes. You can e-mail me by clicking on my "View my complete profile".

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Forbes Exposes DOJ Extortion Racket

"In 2007 Weatherford International, an oil service firm with roots in Houston, discovered it might have a bribery problem on its hands--one or more of its employees might have paid bribes in Europe. ... By that time [William] Jacobson had left Justice to join Fulbright [& Jaworski] as a partner and started doing compliance work for none other than Weatherford. ... Nice work if you can get it--and to the tune of billions of dollars, lawyers, accountants and consultants, many with past ties to the Justice Department, are getting it. ... Whether it's having any impact on reducing bribery is another matter. Instead, companies can find themselves getting extorted in foreign lands, only to get extorted again by Washington. ... More likely, the company pays out huge fines and then hires more lawyers as government-mandated compliance monitors, a job that can stretch into years of legal billings. ... Mark Mendelsohn, 42, headed the [DOJ's] FCPA unit when the surge in enforcement largely occurred. ... 'At some point a new person will sit in my seat,' said Mendelsohn while on stage with a group of FCPA defense lawyers at a conference in February. 'I will join Peter and Richard and Mary on the other end of the dais.' ... For decades the FCPA, which prohibits bribery of foreign officials, was a sleepy statute, hardly enforced. ... In 2000 federal prosecutors brought no FCPA actions. In 2004 there were 3. Last year ther ewere 34 criminal FCPA actions. A lot more are in the pipeline. The [DOJ] has 150 open FCPA investigations. ... The prosecutors, though, are doing something else at the same time. They are creating a lucrative industry--FCPA defense work--in which they will someday be prime candidates for the cushy assignments. ... But there is nothing to stop prosecutors from ginning up cases that will feed the lawyers who used to have their jobs or from looking forward to a payday in the private sector that will be made possible by their busy successors at Justice. ... The grandaddy of cases is the one involving Siemens, Europe's biggest engineering firm. ... Debevoise and Deloitte charged $850 million in fees and expenses. ... Lawyers and accountants also made a fortune off a recently resolved Daimler bribery case. ... Deloitte, which has an FCPA practice headed by Edward Rial, a former federal prosecutor, got its time at the feeding trough. Delotte declines to comment. [Robert] Bennett says his work was in the bet interest of the company facing serious prosecution", my emphasis, Nathan Vardi at Forbes, 24 May 2010, link: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0524/business-weatherford-kbr-corruption-bribery-racket.html.

I supppose MM was creating a job for himself for the time he was to leave the DOJ. The FCPA was rarely enforced until MM decided he needed a post-DOJ position. AUSAs "ginning up cases"? "Say it ain't so, Joe". Gag me with a spoon. Until you've seen the DOJ at work, you can't believe how incompetent and corrupt the typical AU attorney and AUSA is. You can't believe it. Why did my "girlfriend" Mary Jo White threaten to indict Joe Jett? If couldn't be because GE's Jack Welch wanted it, could it? GE didn't pay off by hiring Debevoise & Plimption to represent it in various matters? How dare you think such a thing. See my 31 December 2008 and 1 May 2010 posts: